内容来源：https://www.quantamagazine.org/when-coupled-volcanoes-talk-these-researchers-listen-20260327/

内容总结：

火山“对话”：科学家揭示地下岩浆的隐秘联通

1912年，阿拉斯加卡特迈火山剧烈喷发，其威力之大曾让当时科学家误以为喷发源自卡特迈山本身。然而上世纪50年代的地质测绘揭示，真正的喷发源头位于10公里外一个名为诺瓦鲁普塔的新生火山口。卡特迈山三分之二的山体因内部岩浆横向流失而塌陷，这首次证明火山之间可能存在地下联通关系。

如今，随着监测技术进步，全球多地陆续发现此类“耦合火山”。2014年，冰岛巴达本加火山下方的地震活动最终在45公里外的霍卢赫劳恩裂隙引发喷发，首次实时记录了岩浆长距离横向迁移。2021-2023年间，冰岛雷克雅内斯半岛的法格拉达尔火山群与斯瓦特森格火山系统交替喷发，进一步印证了耦合现象。

在夏威夷，加州理工学院团队通过人工智能分析地震数据，首次绘制出基拉韦厄和冒纳罗亚火山地下共享的岩浆通道网络——两者通过名为“帕哈拉岩床复合体”的深层水平储层相互关联。尽管喷发的熔岩化学成分迥异，但地震图像清晰显示它们同属一个岩浆系统。

2025年初，希腊圣托里尼岛发生强烈地震活动。德希合作项目“Multi-Marex”通过海陆联合监测发现，地下岩浆上涌导致圣托里尼及其附近海底科伦坡火山同时收缩，表明两者存在岩浆交换。这为预测该区域火山活动提供了关键依据。

科学家指出，耦合火山的互动模式多样：可能交替喷发，也可能同时活动；喷发类型和熔岩成分未必相同。这些发现颠覆了传统认知，表明岩浆在地下可横向迁移数十公里，火山系统间的联系比想象中更为复杂深远。目前，从中非到日本，更多研究正在全球火山带展开，以揭示地球深处这场持续的“火山对话”。

中文翻译：

当火山彼此“交谈”，这些研究者侧耳倾听

引言

1912年夏，一则消息传到植物学家罗伯特·菲斯克·格里格斯耳中：世界末日降临在了阿拉斯加沿岸的居民岛科迪亚克。次年，这位俄亥俄大学的学者率领首批考察队登岛，目睹了令人不安的景象：整座岛屿被厚达一英尺的火山灰覆盖。受灾范围远不止于此——在阿拉斯加大陆上，昔日群峰耸立的卡特迈火山仍喷涌着毒气，大地满目焦黑。

卡特迈火山周边曾是草木丰茂的河谷。格里格斯在后来的考察记录中写道："山谷里升腾着成百上千——不，是成千上万道烟柱……有的蒸汽喷涌高达千尺才逐渐消散。"这片持续沸腾嘶鸣数十年的土地，至今仍被称为"万烟谷"。

格里格斯团队所见证的，正是二十世纪最剧烈火山活动的余波。那场持续60小时的爆发将太平洋西北部笼罩在漆黑的"雪花"中，喷发产生的气溶胶在大气中滞留逾年，导致北半球平均气温下降1摄氏度。

灾难不仅带来全球降温和山谷焚毁，更将卡特迈火山三座主峰中的两座夷为深达千米、宽约2.5公里的巨坑。当时学界普遍认为：卡特迈火山喷发了绝大部分岩浆，因而形成巨大裂谷。

但真相往往隐于表象。1950年代，加州大学伯克利分校地质学家加尼斯·柯蒂斯通过精细测绘发现，1912年喷发的源头并非卡特迈主峰，而是其西侧10公里处一个前所未见的地壳裂口。

经过大量野外考察，科学家得出结论：卡特迈山体三分之二的消失，源于这个被命名为"诺瓦鲁普塔"的裂口劫掠了其岩浆库。这一发现颠覆了传统认知——火山向来被视为独立系统，各自拥有熔岩供给源。卡特迈与诺瓦鲁普塔首次揭示了火山可能存在"联动"现象。

过去十年间，随着传感技术与科学认知的进步，研究者从夏威夷到希腊，从日本到冰岛，陆续发现了更多联动火山。"每对组合都独一无二，"华盛顿卡内基科学研究所火山学家戴安娜·罗曼指出，"但本质上它们似乎在彼此'对话'。"通过持续研究，科学家正学习解读这些地质密语。

岩浆的"暗度陈仓"

岩浆如同地狱特调的热汤——固态晶体与熔融含气岩石的炽热混合体。正如汤品风味各异，岩浆也因成分不同呈现迥异形态：富含二氧化硅时浓稠如油，含量较低时则流动似蜜。涌出地表后，我们通常称其为熔岩。

无论成分如何，岩浆天生具有上浮趋势。"岩浆本该向上运动，"迈阿密大学地球物理学家福克·阿梅隆指出。但诺瓦鲁普塔的"岩浆劫持"事件首次暗示：熔岩的流动性可能超乎想象。"我们过于专注研究岩浆从深部到表层的垂直运动，或许将问题过度简化了，"牛津大学火山学家大卫·派尔反思道。

1950年代，研究者通过绘制火山灰分布图发现：1912年灾难的源头并非卡特迈——火山灰并未呈同心圆状环绕该火山，反而包围着诺瓦鲁普塔。

更确凿的证据来自岩石分析。在卡特迈发现的安山岩与英安岩，其化学成分与诺瓦鲁普塔喷发物完全吻合。"这堪称完美匹配，"阿拉斯加大学费尔班克斯分校火山学家约翰·艾歇尔伯格指出。此外，卡特迈坍塌的岩体体积，与诺瓦鲁普塔喷发量几乎完全相等。

地质学界如今认为：卡特迈下方的岩浆曾横向运移数公里，最终从诺瓦鲁普塔涌出。"两者存在直接关联已毋庸置疑，"艾歇尔伯格强调。但岩浆为何如此运动仍是未解之谜。他推测这可能类似自流井现象——地下受压流体自然流向新开口。诺瓦鲁普塔裂口或许由一股上升岩浆强行冲破地壳形成，这个低压通道诱使卡特迈的岩浆侧向流动。

由于当时缺乏现代仪器监测，科学家只能基于现有证据推演。要确证岩浆能在联动火山间迁移，必须借助高科技传感器实时捕捉全过程。

2014年，他们终于等到了机会。

冰岛"双生"火山

冰岛堪称漂浮的火山要塞。这片土地坐落于两大分离板块边界，持续承受撕裂之力。2014年，巴达本加火山（形似巨釜）下方地震频次骤增，预示喷发在即。但震群竟逐渐远离该火山，熔岩最终从45公里外霍卢赫劳恩地区的裂隙涌出——那里属于另一座火山阿斯恰的势力范围。

这是科学家首次观测到岩浆在火山间长距离迁移。"对横向运移的岩浆而言，这距离非同小可，"冰岛气象局火山地震监测负责人克里斯廷·琼斯多蒂尔指出。

2020年，雷克雅内斯半岛开始震颤。科学家布设的传感器网络以前所未有的精度追踪着地下岩浆活动。他们运用地震仪记录岩浆冲破地壳的声响，辅以测量地表形变的仪器。

监测网建成不久，沉寂约八百年的法格拉达尔火山裂隙系统突然苏醒，在2021至2023年间多次喷发。随后在2023年末，另一裂隙系统斯瓦特森格接替活跃，以数月为周期持续喷发，而法格拉达尔则归于沉寂。

"它们从不同时活动，"琼斯多蒂尔指出，"如此轮番上阵……着实可疑。"正如巴达本加与阿斯恰，法格拉达尔与斯瓦特森格似乎也形成了联动。

万里之外，另一位科学家正研发将岩浆联通网络可视化的工具。

追踪"岩浆动脉"

数十年来，科学家依靠地震波追踪岩浆，但这种方法往往迟缓且不够精确。直到近年，研究者仍需人工筛查地震波形图识别微震，再据此反推岩浆运动轨迹。许多湮没在背景噪声中的微弱震信号，肉眼根本无法辨识。

2010年代，加州理工学院地球物理学家扎克·罗斯决心改进震情探测。他用机器学习程序分析加州十年间的地震数据，最终识别出的微震数量是传统人工分析的十倍。整个加州的隐伏断层系统由此如烟花般在图中显现。

随后，罗斯将升级版算法应用于夏威夷数据。这片如冰岛般火山密布的土地上，基拉韦厄与冒纳罗亚两座活火山仍具致命破坏力。

火山学界长期认为这两座火山独立活动：二者喷发的熔岩化学成分差异显著，且缺乏相互影响的实证。但2019年，基拉韦厄附近帕哈拉镇地下深处出现地震漩涡。罗斯用算法处理震动数据生成三维图像，意外揭露了庞大的地下通道系统。

这个岩浆循环系统的核心是名为"帕哈拉岩床复合体"的系列水平储层。两条"动脉"由此延伸，分别通向基拉韦厄与冒纳罗亚。"我清楚记得在办公室初次看到这景象时大家的反应，"罗斯回忆道，"相当震撼。"

"两座火山共享深部岩浆源却喷发化学性质迥异的熔岩，这让人深感不安，"罗曼坦言。但地震证据无可辩驳——它们确实存在联动。

与其他联动火山相比，夏威夷这对组合的关联更显变幻莫测：有时如冰岛火山般轮番喷发，可能因一方剧烈抽取共享岩浆导致另一方供给不足；有时却同时喷发，罗曼解释这可能因连通它们的"岩浆心脏"过于充盈，使两座火山"同时获得滋养"。

聆听火山"对话"

圣托里尼这座C形希腊岛屿有着狂暴的火山史。公元前1600年左右，其火山毁灭性喷发曾加速航海文明米诺斯的衰亡。如今海湾中正孕育两座新生火山，而近海还潜伏着能引发恐怖海啸与窒息气云的科伦博火山。

该地区自然受到科学家严密监控。2024年启动的德希合作项目"多重海洋探测"在圣托里尼陆地及海床布设了多层传感器网络。"投入立即见效，"伍兹霍尔海洋研究所火山学家乔纳斯·普雷恩指出——2025年1月底，该区域恰巧开始震颤。

强烈地震摇撼圣托里尼，居民纷纷逃离。"民众忧心忡忡，"普雷恩描述。但数周后震群消退，同时圣托里尼与科伦博火山体竟出现收缩。

成因何在？爱琴海错综复杂的构造格局——纵横交错的断层与星罗棋布的火山——使得深部过程极难解析。但借助机器学习分析监测数据，科学家迅速给出解释：一股岩浆从极深处上升至地表下约3公里处，虽未具备喷发所需的足够动能，但其部分熔岩似乎源自他处。

地壳中另一个被认为供给科伦博火山的岩浆库，因其储备流失而收缩。这无疑是火山联动的又一案例。研究团队希望深化认知能更准确预测圣托里尼与科伦博的未来活动。

从希腊到夏威夷，从中非到日本，研究者正在寻找更多联动火山组合。他们逐渐认识到：联动火山未必喷发同类熔岩或呈现相同喷发模式；岩浆抵达地表前可能经历超乎想象的远距离运移；火山间的深部联系可能远比预期复杂。在这条探索之路上，每一次对火山"对话"的聆听，都在重塑人类对地球脉搏的理解。

英文来源：

When Coupled Volcanoes Talk, These Researchers Listen
Introduction
In the summer of 1912, word reached Robert Fiske Griggs that the apocalypse had arrived on Kodiak, an inhabited island off the coast of Alaska. The following year, Griggs, a botanist at the University of Ohio, led the first of several expeditions to the island, where he and a team glimpsed a disquieting sight: Kodiak was shrouded in a full foot of ash. And it wasn’t just the island. On the mainland on a formerly multi-peaked volcano called Mount Katmai, the soot-covered landscape was still venting noxious gas.
The environs of Mount Katmai had been home to a lush river valley. Griggs later wrote that on his surveying missions, he found that it “was full of hundreds, no, thousands — literally, tens of thousands — of smokes curling up. … Some were sending up columns of steam which rose a thousand feet before dissolving.” The site, which bubbled and hissed for decades, is still called the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes.
Griggs and his fellow expeditioners were walking through the aftermath of the 20th century’s most prolific act of volcanism — a 60-hour frenzy that smothered much of the Pacific Northwest in onyx snow. Aerosols released by the eruption lingered for so long in the atmosphere that average temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere dropped by 1 degree Celsius for over a year.
The eruption did more than cool the skies and scorch an entire network of valleys. It also collapsed two of the three peaks of Mount Katmai into a single pit 1 kilometer deep and 2.5 kilometers across. At the time, it seemed obvious what had happened: Katmai had unleashed most of its magma, and it had left a giant chasm in its wake.
But the truth isn’t always obvious. In the 1950s, detailed geologic mapping of Katmai and its surroundings by Garniss Curtis, a geologist at the University of California, Berkeley, revealed that the eruption had emerged not from the now-collapsed peaks of the volcano, but from an opening in Earth’s crust 10 kilometers to the west that had never been seen before.
After extensive fieldwork, scientists reached a conclusion: Two-thirds of Katmai had disappeared because this opening had stolen Katmai’s magma. The idea was controversial, because volcanoes were always thought to act independently, tapping their own supplies of molten, eruptible rock. But Katmai and the opening, dubbed Novarupta, offered the first real clue that volcanoes could be connected, or “coupled.”
In the past decade, thanks to an improving suite of sensors and techniques and a stronger scientific understanding, researchers have identified other coupled volcanoes from Hawai‘i to Greece, and from Japan to Iceland. Each coupling is unique, said Diana Roman, a volcanologist at Carnegie Science in Washington, D.C., but fundamentally, coupled volcanoes “seem to talk to each other.” With sustained study, scientists are learning to listen in on what they’re saying.
Side Steps
Think of magma as being like a particularly infernal soup: a hot mixture of solid crystals and molten, gas-filled rock. Like soup, it comes in different flavors. Sometimes it’s suffused with a compound named silica, which makes it thick and gloopy like oil. Sometimes, it’s light on the silica, which makes it runny like hot honey. When magma breaches the surface of the Earth, it’s usually called lava.
Whatever its ingredients, magma is naturally buoyant. In general, “magma is supposed to go upward,” said Falk Amelung, a geophysicist at the University of Miami. But Novarupta’s act of magma theft provided the first hint that molten rock might be nimbler than scientists realized. “We’ve been so busy thinking about how magma gets from depth to the surface that maybe we’ve reduced the problem to one dimension,” said David Pyle, a volcanologist at the University of Oxford.
In the 1950s, researchers discovered that Katmai wasn’t responsible for the cataclysm of 1912 when they mapped the eruption’s ashfall. Instead of forming a concentric pattern around Katmai, the ash encircled Novarupta.
Further proof emerged in studies of volcanic rocks found at Katmai called andesites and dacites, which had the same chemical composition as those blasted out of Novarupta. “It’s a perfect match,” said John Eichelberger, a volcanologist and natural-hazards researcher at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. In addition, the volume of rock removed during the Katmai collapse was almost exactly equal to the volume of rock propelled from Novarupta.
Geologists now believe that magma below Katmai moved sideways for several kilometers before emerging at Novarupta. “There’s no question there’s a direct connection between Novarupta and Katmai,” Eichelberger said.
But no one is sure why the magma moved this way. Eichelberger said he wonders if the situation was a bit like the activity in an artesian well, wherein pressurized fluids underground naturally flow out of a new opening. In this case, the opening at Novarupta was probably created by a rogue stream of rising magma that smashed its way through the crust. This opened a low-pressure channel, and Katmai’s own magma moved sideways toward it.
The eruption wasn’t monitored with modern instrumentation, so scientists can only offer their best guesses as to what happened. To build up their body of evidence that magma could move between coupled volcanoes, they would need to capture the process with high-tech sensors in real time.
In 2014, they did just that.
Cold Connection
Iceland is a floating fortress of volcanoes. That’s partly because the country sits atop the boundary of two diverging tectonic plates; it’s constantly being pulled in two.
In 2014, a spike in earthquakes beneath the cauldron-shaped Bárðarbunga volcano seemed to suggest that an eruption was imminent. But the quakes migrated away from Bárðarbunga, and lava eventually gushed out of several fissures in the realm of another volcano, Askja, at a site named Holuhraun, 45 kilometers away.
This was the first time scientists had seen magma appearing to travel so far from one volcano to the next. That’s “a really long way for magma to travel laterally,” said Kristín Jónsdóttir, the head of the department of volcanoes, earthquakes, and deformation at the Icelandic Met Office.
By 2020, another part of the island nation, the Reykjanes Peninsula, had begun to quake. Scientists dotted the area with sensors that allowed them to track the subterranean migration of magma with remarkable precision. They used seismometers, which can record the sound of magma as it smashes through the crust, along with instruments that measure the changing shape of the ground.
Soon after they finished setting up, the peninsula’s Fagradalsfjall fissure system sprang to life for the first time in about eight centuries. It erupted repeatedly between 2021 and 2023. Then, in late 2023, a different fissure system, called Svartsengi, took over. It erupted every few months while Fagradalsfjall fell silent.
“They’re never doing something at the same time,” Jónsdóttir said. “For them to take turns like that … it’s very suspicious.” It seemed that, just like Bárðarbunga and Askja, Fagradalsfjall and Svartsengi were coupled.
Half a world away, another scientist was working on the tools to turn these magmatic connections into a map.
Hot on the Trail
For decades, scientists have used earthquakes to track magma, but the work was often slow and imprecise. Until recently, scientists could only manually read through graphs of seismic recordings to pick out tremors, then use the data to trace the movements of magma that caused them. Many of the more subtle quakes, buried in background noise, were invisible to human eyes.
In the 2010s, Zach Ross, a geophysicist at the California Institute of Technology, wanted to improve on the quake-finding process. He trained a machine learning program on various seismic symphonies recorded across California over a decade. Ultimately, the program identified 10 times more tremors than any human-led seismic survey had been able to find. As a result, previously invisible fault networks throughout California lit up like fireworks.
Next, Ross tried a new, more advanced version of his quake-finding algorithms on data from Hawai‘i. Hawai‘i, like Iceland, is full of volcanoes. And while many are extinct or dormant, two of them, Kīlauea and Mauna Loa, are still capable of destructive and deadly eruptions.
Volcanologists largely suspected that Kīlauea and Mauna Loa acted independently. The chemistry of their erupted lavas couldn’t have looked more different, and there wasn’t any compelling evidence to suggest that an eruption at one could affect the other.
In 2019, there was a maelstrom of seismic activity near Kīlauea, deep below the town of Pāhala. Ross fed recordings of the shaking to his algorithms to generate a 3D map. In the process, he uncovered a giant system of passageways.
At the heart of this magmatic circulatory system was a series of horizontal reservoirs called the Pāhala sill complex. From those reservoirs branched two arteries, one leading to Kīlauea, the other reaching toward Mauna Loa. “I remember very clearly how we all reacted when we first saw that in my office,” Ross said. “It was pretty shocking.”
The idea that the two shared a deeper magma source but erupted two chemically distinct types of lava made people “really uncomfortable,” Roman said. But the seismic evidence was impossible to ignore; they seem to be coupled.
Their connection seems different — more mercurial, changeable, compared to those of other coupled volcanoes. Sometimes, as with Iceland’s volcanoes, the ones in Hawai‘i take turns erupting. This could be because one taps magma from their shared source so aggressively that the other volcano doesn’t have much left to extract. But on other occasions, both erupt at the same time. This could be because the magmatic heart that connects them fills up with so much magma that both volcanoes “get juiced,” Roman said.
Joining the Conversation
Santorini is a C-shaped Greek island with a violent volcanic past. The most catastrophic outburst of its volcano, in roughly 1600 BCE, contributed to the end of the seafaring Minoan civilization. Today, two small new volcanoes are growing out of its bay, and another one called Kolumbo — capable of producing fearsome tsunamis and clouds of suffocating gases — lurks underwater just offshore.
Unsurprisingly, the region is comprehensively monitored by scientists. In 2024, a new German-Greek venture called Multi-Marex began to install layers of sensors on not just the land but also the seafloor around Santorini. The effort paid off almost immediately, said Jonas Preine, a volcanologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; by chance, at the end of January 2025, the region began to shudder.
Large earthquakes rocked Santorini, and many of its residents fled, fearing an eruption. “The residents were so worried,” Preine said. But after several weeks, the quakes dropped off. At the same time, both Santorini and Kolumbo shrank.
What happened? The tectonic architecture of the Aegean Sea is messy, rife with crisscrossing faults and myriad volcanoes that make unraveling what happens at depth extremely difficult. But scientists analyzing Multi-Marex data with the assistance of machine learning quickly produced an explanation: A stream of magma had risen from a great depth to just 3 kilometers or so below the surface. The magma didn’t have enough momentum to punch through to the surface, but it did seem to borrow some of its molten rock from elsewhere.
Another magma reservoir in the crust, one thought to feed Kolumbo, contracted as its reserves drained away. It certainly seemed like another case of volcanic coupling — and the team hopes their improved understanding leads to more accurate forecasting of Santorini and Kolumbo’s future volcanic activity.
In Greece and Hawai‘i, and in other locations like Central Africa and Japan, researchers are looking for the next sets of coupled volcanoes, which they know might exhibit a variety of connected behaviors, including taking turns or erupting simultaneously. They now know that coupled volcanoes won’t necessarily produce the same type of lava or the same type of eruption. And they know not to underestimate how far magma might travel on its journey to the surface, and how deep the connection between coupled volcanoes might be.